{"id":173426,"date":"2020-11-23T12:01:20","date_gmt":"2020-11-23T12:01:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=173426"},"modified":"2020-11-22T05:47:39","modified_gmt":"2020-11-22T05:47:39","slug":"donald-trumps-refusal-to-concede-the-election-is-something-to-be-feared","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/11\/donald-trumps-refusal-to-concede-the-election-is-something-to-be-feared\/","title":{"rendered":"Donald Trump&#8217;s Refusal to Concede the Election Is Something to Be Feared"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_173427\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/trump-scaled.jpg\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-173427\" class=\"wp-image-173427 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/trump-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/trump-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/trump-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/trump-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/trump-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/trump-2048x1365.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-173427\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo by Evan Vucci\/AP\/Shutterstock<\/p><\/div>\n<p><em>21 Nov 2020 &#8211; <\/em>For a while, they were a source of amusement among Twitter pundits, cable news commentators and late-night talk show hosts: Donald Trump\u2019s delusional tweets that he had actually won the presidential election and the comically inept efforts of his legal team, led by an unhinged Rudy Giuliani, to try to overturn the results that have made Joe Biden the president-elect.<\/p>\n<p>The farcical nature of this \u201cclown show,\u201d as MSNBC&#8217;s Wille Geist called it on <em>Morning Joe<\/em> this week, was fully exposed in jaw-dropping press conference this Thursday [19 Nov] at which Giuliani, with what looked like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2020\/nov\/19\/rudy-giuliani-dye-my-cousin-vinny-press-conference\"  target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-event-click=\"{&quot;element&quot;:&quot;ExternalLink&quot;,&quot;outgoingURL&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2020\/nov\/19\/rudy-giuliani-dye-my-cousin-vinny-press-conference&quot;}\">rivulets of hastily applied hair dye streaming down both sides of his face<\/a>, quoted lines from <em>My Cousin Vinny<\/em> and threw out baseless allegations of election fraud. Meanwhile his accomplice, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/joewalsh\/2020\/11\/20\/who-is-sidney-powell-meet-trumps-new-top-conspiracy-theorist\/\"  target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-event-click=\"{&quot;element&quot;:&quot;ExternalLink&quot;,&quot;outgoingURL&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/joewalsh\/2020\/11\/20\/who-is-sidney-powell-meet-trumps-new-top-conspiracy-theorist\/&quot;}\">conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell<\/a> claimed that Trump \u201cwon the election by a landslide\u201d and the only reason the votes don&#8217;t support that claim is because they were tampered with by \u201ccommunists\u201d in Cuba and Venezuela.<\/p>\n<p>The farce on display even prompted Christoper Krebs, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/realDonaldTrump\/status\/1328852354049957888\"  target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-event-click=\"{&quot;element&quot;:&quot;ExternalLink&quot;,&quot;outgoingURL&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/twitter.com\/realDonaldTrump\/status\/1328852354049957888&quot;}\">fired by Donald Trump<\/a> two days earlier as the administration\u2019s most senior cybersecurity official responsible for securing the presidential election, to weigh in:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">That press conference was the most dangerous 1hr 45 minutes of television in American history. And possibly the craziest. If you don\u2019t know what I\u2019m talking about, you\u2019re lucky.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Chris Krebs (@C_C_Krebs) <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/C_C_Krebs\/status\/1329521812951142400?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" >November 19, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>But, folks, \u00a0the joke is over. This is no longer funny.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s time to step back and realize we are witnessing something this country has never seen before: a sitting president trying to undo a free and fair election and challenging the very basis of our democracy.<\/p>\n<p>Tweets and frivolous lawsuits are one thing (and the Trump team has gone <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/marceelias\/status\/1329557156400599041?s=11\"  target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-event-click=\"{&quot;element&quot;:&quot;ExternalLink&quot;,&quot;outgoingURL&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/twitter.com\/marceelias\/status\/1329557156400599041?s=11&quot;}\">1 for 32 at last count<\/a>). But this past week, Donald Trump crossed the line into potentially illegal territory. First, he called an election official in Michigan&#8217;s Wayne County, reportedly offering his support for her decision not to certify that county&#8217;s heavily Biden-favoring vote (a decision she later backed down on) and then invited a delegation of Michigan legislators to the White House, in an apparent attempt to block that state&#8217;s 16 Electoral College votes from going to Biden even though the former vice president won the state by more than <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/search?q=2020+presidential+race+Michigan&amp;oq=2020+presidential+race+Michigan&amp;aqs=chrome..69i57.14372j0j15&amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;ie=UTF-8\"  target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-event-click=\"{&quot;element&quot;:&quot;ExternalLink&quot;,&quot;outgoingURL&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/www.google.com\/search?q=2020+presidential+race+Michigan&amp;oq=2020+presidential+race+Michigan&amp;aqs=chrome..69i57.14372j0j15&amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;ie=UTF-8&quot;}\">150,000 votes<\/a>. (In 2016, Trump won Michigan by just 11,000 votes.)<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe president\u2019s unpatriotic behavior is reaching new heights with summoning state legislative officials to the White House,\u201d Joanna Lydgate, the national director of the Voter Protection Program, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/nation\/2020\/11\/19\/wayne-county-rescind-certifying-election\/\"  target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-event-click=\"{&quot;element&quot;:&quot;ExternalLink&quot;,&quot;outgoingURL&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/nation\/2020\/11\/19\/wayne-county-rescind-certifying-election\/&quot;}\">told <em>The Washington Post<\/em> this week<\/a>. \u201cThis raises serious legal and ethical concerns about the president\u2019s conduct \u2014 but it will not alter the outcome of the election.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That the two officials who did come to the White House later said they had no plans to challenge the Michigan results is not the point. The point is that the president of the United States is doing everything he can to stay in power even though the people have voted him out. As <em>The New York Times<\/em> put it in an unusually direct headline on Friday: \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/11\/19\/us\/politics\/trump-michigan-election.html\"  target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-event-click=\"{&quot;element&quot;:&quot;ExternalLink&quot;,&quot;outgoingURL&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/11\/19\/us\/politics\/trump-michigan-election.html&quot;}\">Trump Targeting Michigan in His Ploy to Subvert Vote<\/a>,&#8221; and calling the invitation to the legislators a \u201cbrazen step\u201d to \u201csubvert the will of voters.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>On Thursday, Joe Biden <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2020\/11\/19\/politics\/biden-governors-meeting\/index.html\"  target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-event-click=\"{&quot;element&quot;:&quot;ExternalLink&quot;,&quot;outgoingURL&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2020\/11\/19\/politics\/biden-governors-meeting\/index.html&quot;}\">issued his most forceful rebuke<\/a> to Trump and his delaying tactics, saying Trump would be remembered as \u201cone of the most irresponsible presidents in American history.\u201d Speaking after a meeting in Wilmington Del. with a delegation of Democratic and Republican governors, the president-elect said: \u201cIt\u2019s hard to fathom how this man thinks. I\u2019m confident he knows he hasn\u2019t won, and is not going to be able to win, and we\u2019re going to be sworn in on Jan 20.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Finally, some Republicans are beginning to speak out\u2014though, notably, no one in the leadership team of either the Senate or the House. The boldest statement came from Mitt Romney, the party&#8217;s 2012 nominee and the lone Republican senator to have voted to impeach Donald Trump earlier this year:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"zxx\" dir=\"ltr\"><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/S3kFsIRGmi\" >pic.twitter.com\/S3kFsIRGmi<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MittRomney\/status\/1329629701447573504?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" >November 20, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Another rebuke came from Jeff Flake, the former senator from Arizona and someone who has been mentioned as a potential 2024 presidential candidate:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">There are no words to describe how inappropriate this is<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/4qMUqf2y7c\" >https:\/\/t.co\/4qMUqf2y7c<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Jeff Flake (@JeffFlake) <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/JeffFlake\/status\/1329570566689284097?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" >November 19, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>But there has not been even a peep of protest from either Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell or House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy,<\/p>\n<p>I recently read <em>The Splendid and The Vile,<\/em> Eric Larson&#8217;s masterful book about Winston Churchill in the darkest period of WW II, and I came across a passage that brought me immediately back to 2020.<\/p>\n<p>After another disastrous setback to the British forces and the continued ineffectuality of Britain&#8217;s prime minister Neville Chamberlain as he clung to the little power he had left, a back-bencher named <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/1982\/09\/27\/opinion\/in-the-name-of-god-go.html\"  target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-event-click=\"{&quot;element&quot;:&quot;ExternalLink&quot;,&quot;outgoingURL&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/1982\/09\/27\/opinion\/in-the-name-of-god-go.html&quot;}\">Leopold Avery stood up in the House of Commons<\/a> and shouted down at Chamberlain, \u201cYou have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. In the name of God, go!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Three days later, Chamberlain resigned and Winston Churchill was named the new prime minister.<\/p>\n<p>It is time for someone of principle to stand in the chamber of the United States Senate and shout out the words, \u201cDonald J. Trump, in the name of God, go!\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.vogue.com\/article\/donald-trump-refusal-to-concede-2020-presidential-election-no-longer-a-joke\" >Go to Original &#8211; vogue.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>21 Nov 2020 &#8211; It\u2019s time to step back and realize we are witnessing something this country has never seen before: a sitting president trying to undo a free and fair election and challenging the very basis of our democracy. Tweets and frivolous lawsuits are one thing (and the Trump team has gone 1 for 32 at last count). But this past week, Donald Trump crossed the line into potentially illegal territory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":173427,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[867,393,276,392,249,70],"class_list":["post-173426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglo-america","tag-anglo-america","tag-coup","tag-democracy","tag-elections","tag-trump","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}